As far as I know, these tags were repurposed in the HTML 5 specification in order to get away from the stylistic—or in other words visual—definition of those tags while also providing reasonable backwards compatibility. According to the standards, the i element:
[…]represents a span of text in an alternate voice or mood[…]
[…]represents a span of text to which attention is being drawn for utilitarian purposes without conveying any extra importance and with no implication of an alternate voice or mood[…]
Whether those definitions imply extra semantic meaning or not is a good question. In my understanding they do. But I'm fairly certain that they make b and i more than purely visual.
The
<b>,<i>vs<strong>,<em>page writes thatbandiare purely visual, however, I think that is misleading.As far as I know, these tags were repurposed in the HTML 5 specification in order to get away from the stylistic—or in other words visual—definition of those tags while also providing reasonable backwards compatibility. According to the standards, the
ielement:And the
belement:Whether those definitions imply extra semantic meaning or not is a good question. In my understanding they do. But I'm fairly certain that they make
bandimore than purely visual.